and children either massacred or carried off prisoners, were enraged to madness.  They marched directly to the fort, which they attacked with great fury, and the natives as resolutely defended, till at length the powder-magazine taking fire, the fort was blown up, together with most of those that were in it.  Various rencounters succeeded to this event, in which much blood was spilled on both sides.  At length, two of the principal leaders being slain, and the third, (after dispatching his wife and children, to prevent their falling into the enemy’s hand,) having put an end to himself, peace was established.

From that period every thing went on very peaceably till the year 1740, when a few Russians lost their lives in a tumult, which was attended with no farther consequences; and, except the insurrection at Bolcheretsk, in 1770, (which, has been already noticed,) there has been no disturbance since.

Though the quelling the rebellion of 1731 was attended with the loss of a great number of inhabitants, yet I was informed that the country had recovered itself, and was become more populous than ever, when, in the year 1767, the small-pox, brought by a soldier from Okotzk, broke out among them for the first time, marking its progress with ravages not less dreadful than the plague, and seeming to threaten their entire extirpation.  They compute that near twenty thousand died of this disorder in Kamtschatka, the Koreki country, and the Kurile Islands.  The inhabitants of whole villages were swept away.  Of this we had sufficient proofs before our eyes.  There are no less than eight ostrogs scattered about the bay of Awatska, all which, we were informed, had been fully inhabited, but are now entirely desolate, except Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and even that contains no more than seven Kamtschadales, who are tributary.  At Paratounca ostrog there are but thirty-six native inhabitants, men, women, and children, which, before it was visited by the small-pox, we were told contained three hundred and sixty.  In our road to Bolcheretsk, we passed four extensive ostrogs, with not an inhabitant in them.  In the present diminished state of the natives, with fresh supplies of Russians and Cossacks perpetually pouring in, and who intermix with them by marriage, it is probable, that in less than half a century there will be very few of them left.  By Major Behm’s account, there are not now more than three thousand who pay tribute, the Kurile islanders included.[80]

I understood that there are at this time, of the military, in the five forts of Nichnei, Verchnei, Tigil, Bolcheretsk, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul, about four hundred Russians and Cossacks, and near the same number at Ingiga, which, though to the north of the peninsula, is, I learned, at present under the commander of Kamtschatka; to these may be added the Russian traders and emigrants, whose numbers are not very considerable.